——­No, but I often read what they say about other people.  There are about a dozen phrases that all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows.  If you get one, you get the whole lot.

What are they?—­Oh, that depends a good deal on latitude and longitude.  Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately.  Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization.

What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?—­Well, I should say a set of influences something like these:—­1st.  Relationships, political, religious, social, domestic. 2d.  Oysters; in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criticism.  I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy; but my sovereign logic for regulating public opinion—­which means commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry—­is the following:  Major proposition. Oysters au naturel.  Minor proposition. The same “scalloped.” Conclusion. That ——­ (here insert entertainer’s name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant,—­and the rest.

——­No, it isn’t exactly bribery.  One man has oysters, and another epithets.  It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a “spread” on linen, and the other on paper,—­that is all.  Don’t you think you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical line?  I am sure I couldn’t resist the softening influences of hospitality.  I don’t like to dine out, you know,—­I dine so well at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is so pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the boarders]; but if I did partake of a man’s salt, with such additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells.  Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us,—­not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded.  I love truth as chiefest among the virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it.  I might write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is another matter.

——­Listen, Benjamin Franklin!  This is for you, and such others of tender age as you may tell it to.